Dance concert free to students April 11-13

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s dance program will be putting on its annual dance concert, An Evening of Dance, choreographed by students and featuring a vast range of styles from modern and contemporary dance to jazz and hip-hop.

The concert will be showing from Thursday, April 11 to Saturday, April 13 in Burke Hall Theatre, with free admission to UL Lafayette students, faculty and staff.

This year’s An Evening of Dance will feature the work of 11 student choreographers, who’ve been working hard to create their choreography, present it to professors for acceptance into the show and running rehearsals since January to teach their work to the performers.

Jannah Simon, a graduating dance major and one of the show’s choreographers, shared how the process of putting together the show. It starts with adjudication by the professors, where students present their choreography to the professors who look at the work as objectively as possible.

“Everyone watches all the dances and they look at choreographic tools and who’s using the most space and who has more defined movement and who has a better idea to pick apart who they want to be in the show. And then they pick a mentor for you accordingly as to who they think would help you along your way better,” Simon said.

While the student choreographers are the ones primarily running rehearsals, professors play a role in mentoring them and helping them where they may need it.

“As for teaching the choreography, cleaning it, critiquing it, all that is up to the choreographer,” Simon said. “But we do have professor mentors, so each of us have a designated mentor that we can converse with, and they can help us with any ideas that we might wanna rework or give us any ideas that they think would help the choreography look better or appeal better on the stage.”

Simon shared her own experience working as a choreographer and how she creates her dances and movements.

“Choreography is, I think, one of the more complicated parts of working in the professional dance world. The way that I work is I come up with an idea and then I improv and find movements that I like on myself or that I think are comfortable or look cool,” Simon said. “And we also take inspiration from other things, so my piece this semester is a hip-hop dance that is based on 2000s hip-hop movies like “Step Up,” “Honey,” “You Got Served,” stuff like that. So we can take inspiration from other things and create our own movement.”

Simon added that, once a dance is created, actually teaching it to dancers isn’t especially hard. It becomes more of a matter of making the moves look the way the choreographer wants them to on other people’s bodies.

The performers of the show aren’t just limited to UL Lafayette’s dance majors, either. An Evening of Dance holds open auditions, and this year’s performers include dance minors, UL Lafayette students that aren’t in the dance program at all as well as a few high schoolers.

Simon had been conceptualizing and coming up with ideas for her piece since December of last year, and rehearsals for An Evening of Dance started in January around the first week of classes. While her piece is set to hip-hop and R&B, other pieces in the show feature jazz and modern dances.

“You can expect a diverse range of genres and technique, and something that shows the choreographer’s personality. We were all able to put our heart and soul into it and show that to the community,” Simon said.

An Evening of Dance will be held in Burke Hall Theatre on April 11 and 12 at 7 p.m., and on April 13 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., with admission free to UL Lafayette students, faculty and staff, and $10 for everyone else. Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

Simon closed by encouraging people to come out to experience the show, and to audition for the next one if they find themselves interested in dance.

“Dance is just something that everyone should experience. It’s quite beautiful to see all the different types and styles and stories that people tell. And if anyone in the future really wants to dance, just come audition, we open it to everybody and we like to give everybody a chance,” Simon said.